You Won’t Get a Trophy, But Go Ahead—Fail

• By Matthew Gordon
• September 10, 2013
• comments

Atychiphobia: Have you heard of it?

It’s the irrational, constant, overwhelming fear of failure. Chances are you don’t have this condition. But if you’re a member of Gen Y (born in the early 1980s to early 2000s) you might experience a mild case from time to time.

When you’ve been handed a trophy just for participating, been graded on effort, or had your photo snapped for the local newspaper for not-always-stellar achievements, fear of failure can become overwhelming later in life.

This fear can’t go on forever, though, and you can’t use atychiphobia as an excuse. It’s a real phobia, but your boss will chalk that up alongside “the dog ate my homework.”

The Thing That Goes Bump in the Night

When you think about taking a new job in the big city, do your palms sweat? Do you get anxiety when you think about packing up and moving out? That’s normal. But if you don’t even apply for the position because you fear you won’t be considered, you have a problem.

Many Gen Y kids grew up being congratulated, honored and shown off. They might not have had opportunities ...

5 Reasons More Communication Isn’t Better

• By Geoffrey Tumlin
• September 9, 2013
• comments

This should be the golden age of communication. The digital revolution has given people unprecedented ways to connect with one other. But the very tools that enable constant contact across the globe all too often distort people’s priorities, fragment their attention, impair their ability to listen, and interrupt face-to-face conversations. Unfortunately, digital innovations that could facilitate meaningful communication frequently impede it instead. Communication’s golden age remains frustratingly out of reach.

For most people the first adaptation to the digital age -- spending less time on an ever-increasing number of messages -- isn’t working. But it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s possible to realize more of the digital revolution’s promise of productive and meaningful interactions by reinventing five faulty beliefs about communication:

1. Stop thinking that more communication is the answer to your problems; more communication is your problem. Too much -- not too little -- talking is what’s causing communication troubles today. Remarkable digital devices make communication quick and easy, and most people have responded by dramatically increasing the quantity of messages they send and receive. The result is a hypercommunicating environment -- overflowing inboxes, buzzing phones and expedient conversations. But a distracted and overloaded communication environment ...

Dispelling the Myth of the Left-Handed Genius

• By Allison Schrager
• September 9, 2013
• comments

Ask left-handed people about their lot and they’ll probably tell you how special they are. They will list all of the famous and brilliant people who are left-hand dominant including every post-Cold War president (except George W. Bush), Joan of Arc and Michelangelo to name just a few.

Up until recently, in America and still in some Asian countries, lefties were vilified. They’ve been accused of being sociopaths and forced to use their right hand.

More recently, we’ve come to celebrate lefties as iconoclasts. The new narrative stresses that lefties’ brains work differently, which makes them more creative. When exposed to language, lefties are more likely to engage both sides of their brain, rather than just the left side. It has also been said that using your left hand engages the right side of the brain, which is associated with creativity. A recent blog post in the New Yorker points to several studies demonstrating how much smarter and more creative lefties are.

Read more at Quartz.

(Image via Anibal Trejo/Shutterstock.com)

Instead of Monitoring Employees, Try Motivating Them

• By Adam Grant
• September 9, 2013
• comments

Employee theft costs the economy up to $200 billion a year. In the hopes of putting a stop to stealing, many managers have turned to surveillance systems. According to new evidence from a rigorous study led by strategy professor Lamar Pierce, surveillance can work. After restaurants installed monitoring software that sent electronic theft alerts to managers, weekly revenue climbed by about 7 percent. Servers appeared to give out fewer free drinks and focused their energy instead on selling more food.

But what if there’s a less expensive, less risky way to eliminate employee theft? Several years ago, a forest products company was losing about $1 million a year due to employee theft. After a few simple policy changes, theft dropped to near zero, and it stayed there for at least three years -- with no monitoring at all.

Employees were stealing equipment from the sawmill. When managers threatened to start video surveillance with hidden cameras, employees began plotting ways to steal the cameras. The managers responded by hiring an organizational psychologist, Gary Latham, to identify a solution.

Latham discovered that the thieves weren’t stealing for the usual reasons. They weren’t trying to take revenge on the company, or ...

Is Your Team Up to the Task?

• By Jackson Nickerson
• September 6, 2013
• comments

Ask EIG is your chance to seek answers to public sector management challenges and conundrums. Submit your questions here.

-- Anonymous

A common mantra in most organizations is that teams, especially diverse ones, lead to higher productivity and employee satisfaction. The belief that teams represent a superior way to organize all too often translates into leaders calling for teamwork in every task.  Yet, the reality is many teams -- some argue the majority of teams -- don’t perform well, which can hamper productivity. Why are individuals so often asked to be on teams?  When can people work alone yet still contribute to the organization in a productive way?  How can these issues be resolved?

Sometimes a team offers a productive way to organize work and sometimes it doesn’t.  Moreover, some teams work ...